Roccat's Kone Aimo gaming mouse reviewed

If you're reading this review, I don't have to tell you that gaming in general—and PC gaming in particular—is bigger than ever. Gaming peripherals come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and now, colors. The emphasis on RGB LED lighting in the current wave of hardware has been the subject of much discussion in TR comment threads, but it's difficult to deny the cool factor of those lights for input devices.

Even with that cool factor, we have to note that everyone's doing it now. Throwing some RGB LEDs on a peripheral isn't groundbreaking anymore—it's practically expected at this point. How does a company distinguish itself now? According to Roccat, the answer is to make its RGB LEDs work better than the competition's. Those LEDs should synchronize with other devices, and do it without sacrificing device performance. Enter our subject for the day: Roccat's Kone Aimo gaming mouse.

I was pretty sure I knew what to expect when Roccat sent me the Kone, because I've actually used a couple of the company's devices before. A Ryos MK was my primary keyboard for a bit, and I also have some experience with Roccat's entry-level Savu mouse. Both products were solid and reliable while I used them, so when I opened up the Kone Aimo's box, I fully expected it to be a solidly-built and eminently-capable pointing device.

I'm happy to report that that's exactly what it is. Folks looking for the high-quality tracking experience afforded by other mice based on variants of the PixArt PMW3360 sensor will be perfectly pleased with the Kone Aimo's performance. This sensor is practically an industry standard in optical gaming mice by now, and we're all for it.

The sensor in the Kone Aimo is actually Roccat's customized version, called "Owl-Eye" in its literature, but in the week or so that I've been using it I haven't noticed any difference between it and the standard PMW3360 in my usual Steelseries Rival 500. Steelseries also makes claims of customizations to its sensor, and that mouse felt the same as the EpicGear Morpha X based on the same sensor. If there are meaningful differences among these implementations, my time in-game with them hasn't teased them out.

It's a lot easier to tell how a mouse will perform simply by wrapping one's hand around it. Let's take a deeper look at the Kone Aimo's form now.